A personal blog owned by Zilko, who regularly writes about his life, or anything that comes up to his mind

Daily Archives: July 7, 2017

Aside from recovering my body after my three consecutive weekend trips, there was actually another reason why I have been “taking a break” from travelling lately. It was because I did not have my passport with me as I was applying for a visa!! Btw, of course, yes, travelling domestically within the Netherlands did not count 😛 .

Anyway, I have been to the country which visa I was applying for a few times, though, so it was nothing new. And the country was: the United Kingdom 😀 .

In the past year or so, I notice there are quite a lot of flight tickets deals to the UK from the Netherlands. Of course, this was quite possibly related to Brexit, which made UK and its poundsterling suddenly cheaper to visit (mainly for mainland Eurozone Europeans). Btw, I last visited the UK in 2015, way before the Brexit, haha. But of course I could not immediately “take advantage” of this currency situation because I would need to submit a visa application first. So finally, this May I decided to just submit one, had my biometric information appointment in mid-June, and last week, I got my passport back with a visa stamped in it!

London, I am back this year!!

Yeay! Now I can start making plans for some visits there! You see, the UK is one of my most favorite European countries: I find it beautiful, (almost) everyone there speaks English (lol 😆 ), generally I like the food, and London (which people speak with really sexy accent 🙈 ) is my most favorite European city. There are a few places I haven’t visited in the country and there are a few other places I would like to revisit. Even though too bad Singapore Airlines terminated its Munich – Manchester route last year. This fifth freedom route would have been a good opportunity for me to finally try Singapore Airlines. Well, we will see, I guess 😀 .

More Expenses

A mini renovation in the shower room not too long ago.

Anyway, do you remember how not too long ago I sighed about the flow of expenses (related to my apartment) that seemed to be never ending? At the moment, it still feels like so, haha 😆 .

You see, as of recently I had to “splurge” some expenses on mini-renovating my shower room (though this can actually be seen as a future investment as well, preventing me from a much worse situation and there were signs it was going down there at that time) and getting a new locking system (though this was totally my fault and was more of an emergency). The other day I also got the bill to pay this year’s waste and water-waste tax of my apartment to the tax department, haha.

And also, I just decided to enroll myself in a tennis club nearby, haha 😛 . There were, of course, the membership fee, the registration fee, and the training fee. Though, again, this could be seen as a future investment for my health and sanity, lol 😆 .

It has been a while since the last time I played tennis.

Okay, okay, to be honest I did feel like I made good expenses, i.e. they were all necessary and served for the better good. I even made a Spreadsheet program to accurately monitor how I was doing financially, and it turned out healthy and really fine. So I am okay about it. But still, at the same time I would also like to save and to, at least, “recover” my life savings to as how it was before the purchase of my apartment! Haha 😆 .